Commenting mainly on France and U.S.policy in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Author of "Web of Deceit, the History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush." Now finishing a novel, "The Watchman's File," delving into Israel's most closely-guarded secret. [It's not the bomb.]

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Monday, April 9, 2012

My Quarter Century with Mike Wallace

I worked on 60 Minutes for more than 26 years, most of the
time as a producer with Mike Wallace. Each report on the show has “produced by”
written on the art work introducing it, but most viewers have no clue what “produced
by” really entails.

Indeed, the great irony of 60 Minutes was a question of
truth in packaging. That is 60 Minutes, which prided itself on ruthless truth
telling, exposing cant and fraud, was, in itself, something of a charade.

The fact is that, although the viewers tuned in to watch the
on-going exploits of Mike, Morley, Harry, Leslie etc. etc., most of the
intrepid reporting, writing, and even many of the most probing questions posed in
the interviews, were not the handiwork of the stars, but much more the effort
of some thirty or more very talented—producers --and associate producers--who
researched and reported the stories that the stars presented --as their own
exploits--each Sunday night.

I was willing to go along with that system because it allowed
me to help shape what was the most powerful news show on television. I was also
willing to rein in my ego because Mike Wallace brought so much to the team himself:
a sharp, penetrating mind, an uncanny ability to seize the essence of a story,
to sense an opening in a tense interview, then thrust with a rapier-like
question for the journalistic kill.

To Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who had once been
a radical underground leader, Mike asked,
“What is the difference between the Yasser Arafat of today and the
Menachem Begin of 1946?”

Seated crosslegged on the floor in front of the Imam
Khomeini in 1979 during the hostage crisis, Mike asked, “President Anwar
el-Sadat of Egypt calls you, Imam — forgive me, his words, not mine — a
lunatic.” Khomeini’s shocked interpreters refused even to translate until
Khomeini insisted.He predicted, correctly, that Sadat would soon be overthrown.

Or to Yassir Arafat, in a backstreet building in war-torn
Beirut. After Arafat excoriated the U.S. for ignoring the human rights of the
Palestinians, Mike leapt at the opening to ask the PLO Chairman about a small
article Mike had found in the back pages of the Times, in which Arafat had
praised former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Afterwards, Arafat’s aide, Mahmoud Labadi, said to Mike as
we were wrapping our equipment and PLO armed toughs roamed the room, “Mike, you’re not going to use that
part about Idi Amin, are you?” Mike smiled and said ever so quietly,

“Mahmoud, do I tell you how to do your job?

No,” said Labadi.

“Then please don’t tell me how to do mine.”

On another occasion in Western Iran, we were with a group of
journalists being escorted by a particularly crazed Iranian colonel to cover the war with Iraq. After the colonel had delivered a long
diatribe against the U.S. government, Mike turned to him and said, “You know,
colonel, “I don’t think much of your government either.”

Later that evening, in a room off the hotel lobby, with
other journalists watching the evening news, the colonel entered, unholstered
his 45, strode up to Mike a wild look in his eyes, and moved forward until the
muzzle of his revolver almost touched Mike’s forehead. Everyone in the room
froze. Mike looked up at the colonel, and with his hand pushed the revolver so
it pointed towards the ceiling. The officer grinned, pulled the trigger. The
pistol was empty.

He was part reporter, part actor playing reporter. He had a
flare for the dramatic, the ability to achieve almost instant rapport with interviewees,
no matter their wealth, achievement, or background. He made them forget the
camera, the lights; he was totally with them in the moment, fascinated by whatever they happened to be saying, from
a famine-stricken mother in Ethiopia, a child dying in her arms, to the crooks
of all shapes and sizes who attempted –almost always unsuccessfully with Mike--to
lie their way to respectability,

Mike’s political agenda never seemed to get in the way. There
was no story that he wouldn’t agree to go after, from detailing the enormous power
of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby in Washington to the peccadilloes of Walter
Cronkite, who we accused of accepting airline tickets for a piece we were doing
on the widespread practice of press junkets. Mike’s targets were often livid, but their rage only
heightened Mike’s pleasure. He loved controversy, being the center of a story, seeing
the sparks fly.

Though he greatly admired the Shah of Iran, was charmed by
his wife and Iran’s ambassador in Washington--when I suggested a report on the
Shah’s brutal secret police, the Savak, Mike immediately concurred.

Later, we did a report during the hostage crisis explaining
why the Iranians had such hatred for the United States. President Jimmy Carter
called to asked CBS News President Bill Leonard, not to broadcast the report. Leonard
refused to comply. The shameful facts we were revealing about U.S. complicity
with the Shah were not unknown to the Iranians—but to most Americans

The only time I saw Mike flinch was when he backed away from
the excellent report produced by Lowell Bergman, claiming that U.S. cigarette
company executives lied under oath before Congress when they claimed they
didn’t know that nicotine was addictive .

CBS management was
refusing to broadcast the report. It was a very tense time, and later became
the subject of a movie, “The Insider.”

Mike, of course, was seriously concerned that his
reputation—as well as the reputation of 60 Minutes--would forever be tarnished
if he didn’t fight back. I agreed and over a bottle of wine at an Italian
restaurant, I suggested he could end the face-off by threatening to resign if
CBS refused to go ahead with the broadcast. There was no way, I argued, that
CBS could take the public relations bashing that would ensue if Mike Wallace
quit over that issue.

Mike finally agreed. He was going to talk to the powers-that-be
the next morning, he said.

He didn’t.

When I asked why, he said he just couldn’t go through with
it. He couldn’t use such tactics.

The bottom line was that Mike could not bear the thought of
not being on the air, on 60 Minutes. That, for him was what life was all about.
During the countless times the subject of retirement came up, he would invariably
shrug, “I couldn’t. I wouldn’t
know what to do.”

He relished the adulation, the eyes following him as he made
his way through a crowded restaurant, the people coming up to him in increasingly
distant airports telling him how much they liked his latest show. It validated
his existence. But more than anything he enjoyed the flash and spark of
controversy, confronting miscreants, catching an interviewee out, breaking
through emotional barriers, to reveal some carefully-hidden weakness. And it
could all be done with a simple gesture, a raised eyebrow and a single word,
like “and?” or “but?”

And yet, and yet, despite having worked with him for more
than a quarter century, I never really knew who he was; what was really going
on deep inside, in the soul, if you will. I would be sitting with him over
dinner after a long day of work and he would be asking me questions about my
domestic life, or whatever, with that same sincere look in his eyes that same intense
concern--that I had seen him use just a few hours earlier in an interview.

But I loved that man. My wife and I will miss him.

He had said he wanted to keep on working till his toes
turned up. Mike, you almost made it.

Barry: You knew Mike Wallace as well as anyone at CBS News because you spent so many years traveling with him; you doing the behind the scenes reporting and Mike doing the on-camera work.Your memories of Mike are right on target. Before there was Sixty Minutes there was The CBS Morning News with Mike Wallace. I was then the producer who traveled occasionally with Mike. He was, as you so well described him, a man who never let you see into that formidable mind and hidden soul. In the South during the civil rights days, we Yankee newsmen weren't always welcome and the KKK could be intimidating, but Mike never flinched and he never let me or anyone see what was going on behind his sometimes mischievous, sometimes piercing eyes.

@barrylando

About Me

Originally from Vancouver, studied at Harvard, Harvard Law and Columbia University, then correspondent for Time Life in South America, and 30 years as Producer with 60 Minutes in Washington D.C. and Paris, where I now live. Wrote book on history of Western Invervention in Iraq, Web of Deceit, now writing a novel, painting, travelling, visiting friends and relatives.